Taking Risks: A Jewish Youth in the Soviet Partisans and His Unlikely Life in California

On the night the SS rounded up the Jews of his Ukrainian ghetto, eighteen-year-old Yosel Epelbaum crawled on his hands and knees to a nearby forest. There he joined a diverse band of pro-Soviet partisans, led by a kind of warlord in the wilderness, who created a forest republic behind Nazi lines. With his courageous comrades, Epelbaum, disrupted the German war effort for almost a year and a half and saved hundreds of civilians at the same time. After the liberation the young survivor became caught up in Europe s robust black market. With little money or formal education, and knowing no English, he immigrated to San Francisco in 1947 and within a year opened an ice cream shop. Only a decade later Joe Pell was well on his way to becoming one of the leading real estate developers in Northern California. Taking risks, related in a taut and vivid style, is his story- one of loss and torment but also daring, ingenuity and uncommon resilience.

Michael Krasny , host of KQED Forum in San Francisco hails Taking Risks by Joe Pell and Fred Rosenbaum: "Though there are many holocaust memoirs, the stories of those brave men and women who fought back with the partisans is often overshadowed by stories of those who fled or survived the concentration camps. Joseph Pell's story is an especially compelling one not only because of his heroic actions in the face of the Nazi juggurnaut and the rampant and often lethal Ukranian and Polish anti-semitism, but it is an American immigrant success story as well."